2006 Dodge Viper SRT-10 Coupe

Return of the tintop serpent.

February 2005
By
TONY SWAN
Photos By
JIM FRENAK

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Sun-in-face and wind-in-hair have been celebrated as essential sports-car joys ever since we discarded the horse, but these joys do have limits. When wind-in-hair is occurring at velocities north of 100 mph, it gets to be more like hair-in-wind, as the strands attempt to separate themselves from the follicles. Our experiences with this phenomenon include a 1990 session in a Viper prototype with none other than Robert Lutz at the helm, hurtling down Arizona back roads at a buck-fifty while his passenger's hair stood resolutely vertical.

Chrysler was still an independent business entity at the time, Lutz was its president, and the Viper was his baby. In the afterglow of this ride, while Lutz was discussing the joys of barely sublight speeds with a member of the Arizona protect-and-serve, we reflected on the distinction between closed and open cars and concluded, again, that having a solid roof and side windows (the original Viper possessed neither) is a Good Thing, in the sense of hair retention (assuming you have hair), general comfort, and going fast. Okay, make that going faster. No one would characterize a Viper roadster as slow, but thanks to cleaner aero, coupes are almost invariably faster than roadsters of equal power, even when the roadster is operating with its top up.

And, in fact, when the tintop Viper-the GTS-arrived in 1996, its top speed did jump from 166 mph to 177, also aided by a 50-hp bump (from 400 to 450) and a 69-pound-lighter weight advantage.

But that was then. When the new hardtop rolls into showrooms in October—it will be called the SRT-10, replacing the GTS moniker—its aero advantage should be a single digit, 0.39 Cd versus 0.40. It's expected to weigh in about 15 pounds heavier than the softtop car, and output numbers for the pushrod aluminum V-10 engine will be unchanged. The kids in Chrysler's Street and Racing Technology (SRT) group felt that 500 horsepower and 525 pound-feet of torque were sufficient, even with the potent new 500-hp Corvette Z06 on the near horizon.

So what's new? Besides the roof, the sheetmetal from the doors rearward was obviously designed and fabricated for the coupe. There's commonality with the Competition coupe—the turnkey racing version introduced in mid-'03—but the rear end is unique to the street coupe. According to exterior designer Ralph Gilles, the objective was "to get some attitude into the car. The roadster has always been a little less edgy."

And the elements of edge are?

"We made the rear spoiler aggressive, the rear taillights are shrouded, the rear diffusers are integrated better, and we maintained the double-bubble roofline to accommodate people wearing helmets."

Helmet use suggests racetracks, where a good many Vipers spend a good many weekends, participating in club events such as lapping days and autocross competitions.

"That's one of the reasons we brought the coupe back," says Gilles. "There are some tracks that don't allow softtops or open cars."

To further accommodate helmet wearers, the new coupe's interior headliner will be readily removable. Other small concessions to comfort and convenience include adjustable foot pedals, which have also been revised to improve heel-and-toe downshifts. (They were skewed left in the previous coupe.) The seats have had some attention to enhance comfort and lateral support, but they'll continue to offer only limited adjustability, a sore point of the GTS.

From a performance point of view, the distinction between coupe and convertible will probably be minimal until speeds soar north of 125 or so mph. At that point, the coupe's slightly cleaner bodywork should begin to give it an edge, and the hard top provides higher body rigidity (Chrysler estimates 30 percent). More important, according to SRT director Dan Knott, the coupe's rear spoiler will provide more downforce and hence better grip at the rear of the car.

"We rolled out our initial coupe concept at a Viper owners' meet in Dallas," says Knott, "and that's one of the things that emerged. They told us we should be more aggressive with the spoiler."

Previous sales performance would indicate that Viper buyers have also told the manufacturer they prefer hard tops to removable ones. During the seven years when both body styles were built, the coupe outsold the roadster 6034 to 3953. Which makes us wonder why Chrysler has once again dragged its feet developing the closed version of its super sports car.

"The convertible has tradition, so that came first," says Knott. "And when we came out with the convertible in 2003, we said, 'Okay, that's all we can afford to do right now.' Every time the coupe question came up after that, we just didn't have the funding to do it. Until now."

Naturally, we wanted Knott to discuss funding in the more personal sense of how much funding a guy needs if he wants to drive home a new coupe. And naturally, aside from a generalization about making the pricing "competitive," Knott refrained from mentioning hard numbers.

That's car-biz SOP. But we don't operate under the same constraints as Knott and his cohorts, so we'll make a semi-informed WAG. The last time the coupe was offered alongside the wind-in-hair Viper was 2002. The base price for an '02 Viper RT/10 was $73,535, and the GTS was $74,050.

Based on that, we forecast a base price of $86,000 for the new Viper SRT-10 coupe in the fall. You heard it here first.

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